INTRODUCTION

A Non-governmental Organization (NGO) is a legally constituted organization

created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any
government and a term usually used by governments to refer to entities that have
no government status. In the cases in which NGOs are funded totally or partially
by governments, the NGO maintains its non-governmental status by excluding
government representatives from membership in the organization. The term is
usually applied only to organizations that pursue some wider social aim that has
political aspects, but that are not overtly political organizations such as political
parties. Unlike the term "intergovernmental organization", the term "non-
governmental organization" has no generally agreed legal definition. In many
jurisdictions, these types of organization are called "civil society organizations" or
referred to by other names.

The number of internationally operating NGOs is estimated at 40,000National

numbers are even higher: Russia has 277,000 NGOs; India is estimated to have
around 3.3 million NGOs.
 DEFINATION

NGOs are defined by the World Bank as "private organizations that pursue
activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the
environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development".

Common usage varies between countries - for example NGO is commonly used for
domestic organizations in Australia that would be referred to as non-profit
organizations in the United States. Such organizations that operate on the
international level are fairly consistently referred to as "non-governmental
organizations", in the United States and elsewhere.

There is a growing movement within the non-profit organization/non-government

sector to define itself in a more constructive, accurate way. The "non-profit"
designation is seen to be particularly dysfunctional because of at least three
reasons: 1) It says nothing about the purpose of the organization, only what it is
not; 2) It focuses the mind on "profit" as being the opposite of the organization's
purpose; 3) It implies that the organization has few financial resources, which
increases the likelihood that it will. Instead of being defined by "non-" words,
organizations are suggesting new terminology to describe the sector. The term
"social benefit organization" (SBO) is being adopted by some organizations. This
defines them in terms of their positive mission. The term "civil society
organization" (CSO) has also been used by a growing number of organizations,
such as the Center for the Study of Global Governance. The term "citizen sector
organization" (CSO) has also been advocated to describe the sector — as one of
citizens, for citizens. These labels, SBO and CSO, position the sector as its own
entity, without relying on language used for the government or business sectors.
However, some have argued that CSO is not particularly helpful, given that most
NGOs are in fact funded by governments and business and that some NGOs are
clearly hostile to independently organized people's organizations. The term "social
benefit organization" seems to avoid that problem, since it does not assume any
particular structure, but rather focuses on the organization's mission.
 HISTORY

International non-governmental organizations have a history dating back to at least

1839. It has been estimated that by 1914 there were 1083 NGOs. International
NGOs were important in the anti-slavery movement and the movement for
women's suffrage, and reached a peak at the time of the World Disarmament
Conference. However, the phrase "non-governmental organization" only came into
popular use with the establishment of the United Nations Organization in 1945
with provisions in Article 71 of Chapter 10 of the United Nations Charter for a
consultative role for organizations which are neither governments nor member
states—see Consultative Status. The definition of "international NGO" (INGO) is
first given in resolution 288 (X) of ECOSOC on February 27, 1950: it is defined as
"any international organization that is not founded by an international treaty". The
vital role of NGOs and other "major groups" in sustainable development was
recognized in Chapter 27 of Agenda 21, leading to intense arrangements for a
consultative relationship between the United Nations and non-governmental
organizations.

Rapid development of the non-governmental sector occurred in western countries

as a result of the processes of restructuring of the welfare state. Further
globalization of that process occurred after the fall of the communist system and
was an important part of the Washington consensus.

Globalization during the 20th century gave rise to the importance of NGOs. Many
problems could not be solved within a nation. International treaties and
international organizations such as the World Trade Organization were
perceived[as being too centred on the interests of capitalist enterprises. Some
argued that in an attempt to counterbalance this trend, NGOs have developed to
emphasize humanitarian issues, developmental aid and sustainable development. A
prominent example of this is the World Social Forum, which is a rival convention
to the World Economic Forum held annually in January in Davos, Switzerland.
The fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2005 was
attended by representatives from more than 1,000 NGOs. Some have argued that in
forums like these, NGOs take the place of what should belong to popular
movements of the poor. Others argue that NGOs are often imperialist in nature,
that they sometimes operate in a racialized manner in third world countries, and
that they fulfill a similar function to that of the clergy during the high colonial era.
The philosopher Peter Hallward argues that they are an aristocratic form of
politics. Whatever the case, NGO transnational networking is now extensive.
 Types of NGOs
NGO type can be understood by orientation and level of co-operation.

NGO type by orientation

 Charitable orientation;
 Service orientation;
 Participatory orientation;
 Empowering orientation;

NGO type by level of co-operation

 Community- Based Organization;

 City Wide Organization;
 National NGOs;
 International NGOs;

Apart from "NGO", often alternative terms are used as for example: independent
sector, volunteer sector, civil society, grassroots organizations, transnational social
movement organizations, private voluntary organizations, self-help organizations
and non-state actors (NSA's).

Non-governmental organizations are a heterogeneous group. A long list of

acronyms has developed around the term "NGO".
These include:

 BINGO, short for business-friendly international NGO or big international

NGO;
 CITS, helping scientific community by motivating young talent towards
research & development
 CSO, short for civil society organization;
 DONGO: Donor Organized NGO;
 ENGO: short for environmental NGO, such as Greenpeace and WWF
 GONGOs are government-operated NGOs, which may have been set up by
governments to look like NGOs in order to qualify for outside aid or
promote the interests of the government in question;
 INGO stands for international NGO; Oxfam ,[[INSPAD]] is an international
NGO;
 QUANGOs are quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations, such as
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). (The ISO is
actually not purely an NGO, since its membership is by nation, and each
nation is represented by what the ISO Council determines to be the 'most
broadly representative' standardization body of a nation. That body might
itself be a nongovernmental organization; for example, the United States is
represented in ISO by the American National Standards Institute, which is
independent of the federal government. However, other countries can be
represented by national governmental agencies; this is the trend in Europe.)
 TANGO: short for technical assistance NGO;
 TNGO: short for transnational NGO;
  GSO: Grassroots Support Organization
 MANGO: short for market advocacy NGO
 CHARDS:Community Health and Rural Development Society

There are also numerous classifications of NGOs. The typology the World Bank
uses divides them into Operational and Advocacy:

The primary purpose of an operational NGO is the design and implementation of

development-related projects. One frequently used categorization is the division
into relief-oriented versus development-oriented organizations; they can also be
classified according to whether they stress service delivery or participation; or
whether they are religious or secular; and whether they are more public or private-
oriented. Operational NGOs can be community-based, national or international.

The primary purpose of an Advocacy NGO is to defend or promote a specific

cause. As opposed to operational project management, these organizations
typically try to raise awareness, acceptance and knowledge by lobbying, press
work and activist events.

USAID refers to NGOs as private voluntary organisations. However many

scholars have argued that this definition is highly problematic as many NGOs are
in fact state and corporate funded and managed projects with professional staff.[

NGOs exist for a variety of reasons, usually to further the political or social goals
of their members or funders. Examples include improving the state of the natural
environment, encouraging the observance of human rights, improving the welfare
of the disadvantaged, or representing a corporate agenda. However, there are a
huge number of such organizations and their goals cover a broad range of political
and philosophical positions. This can also easily be applied to private schools and
athletic organizations.

The number of internationally operating NGOs is estimated at 40,000. National

numbers are even higher: Russia has 277,000 NGOs. India is estimated to have
between 1 million and 2 million
Methods
NGOs vary in their methods. Some act primarily as lobbyists, while others
primarily conduct programs and activities. For instance, an NGO such as Oxfam,
concerned with poverty alleviation, might provide needy people with the
equipment and skills to find food and clean drinking water, whereas an NGO like
the FFDA helps through investigation and documentation of human rights
violations and provides legal assistance to victims of human rights abuses. Others,
such as Afghanistan Information Management Services, provide specialized
technical products and services to support development activities implemented on
the ground by other organizations.

Public relations

Non-governmental organisations need healthy relationships with the public to meet

their goals. Foundations and charities use sophisticated public relations campaigns
to raise funds and employ standard lobbying techniques with governments. Interest
groups may be of political importance because of their ability to influence social
and political outcomes. A code of ethics was established in 2002 by The World
Association of Non Governmental NGOs.

Project management

There is an increasing awareness that management techniques are crucial to project

success in non-governmental organizations Generally, non-governmental
organizations that are private have either a community or environmental focus.
They address varieties of issues such as religion, emergency aid, or humanitarian
affairs. They mobilize public support and voluntary contributions for aid; they
often have strong links with community groups in developing countries, and they
often work in areas where government-to-government aid is not possible. NGOs
are accepted as a part of the international relations landscape, and while they
influence national and multilateral policy-making, increasingly they are more
directly involved in local action.

Staffing
Not all people working for non-governmental organizations are volunteers.

There is some dispute as to whether expatriates should be sent to developing

countries. Frequently this type of personnel is employed to satisfy a donor who
wants to see the supported project managed by someone from an industrialized
country. However, the expertise these employees or volunteers may be
counterbalanced by a number of factors: the cost of foreigners is typically higher,
they have no grassroot connections in the country they are sent to, and local
expertise is often undervalued.

The NGO sector is an important employer in terms of numbers. For example, by

the end of 1995, CONCERN worldwide, an international Northern NGO working
against poverty, employed 174 expatriates and just over 5,000 national staff
working in ten developing countries in Africa and Asia, and in Haiti.

Funding
Large NGOs may have annual budgets in the hundreds of millions or billions of
dollars. For instance, the budget of the American Association of Retired Persons
(AARP) was over US$540 million in 1999. Funding such large budgets demands
significant fundraising efforts on the part of most NGOs. Major sources of NGO
funding are membership dues, the sale of goods and services, grants from
international institutions or national governments, and private donations. Several
EU-grants provide funds accessible to NGOs.

Even though the term "non-governmental organization" implies independence from

governments, most NGOs depend heavily on governments for their funding. A
quarter of the US$162 million income in 1998 of the famine-relief organization
Oxfam was donated by the British government and the EU. The Christian relief
and development organization World Vision collected US$55 million worth of
goods in 1998 from the American government. Nobel Prize winner Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) (known in the USA as Doctors Without Borders) gets 46% of its
income from government sources.

Government funding of NGOs is controversial, since, according to David Rieff,

writing in The New Republic, "the whole point of humanitarian intervention was
precisely that NGOs and civil society had both a right and an obligation to respond
with acts of aid and solidarity to people in need or being subjected to repression or
want by the forces that controlled them, whatever the governments concerned
might think about the matter." Some NGOs, such as Greenpeace do not accept
funding from governments or intergovernmental organizations.

Monitoring and control

In a March 2000 report on United Nations Reform priorities, former U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote in favor of international humanitarian
intervention, arguing that the international community has a "right to protect"
citizens of the world against ethnic cleansing, genocide, and crimes against
humanity. On the heels of the report, the Canadian government launched the
Responsibility to Protect R2PPDF (434 KiB) project, outlining the issue of
humanitarian intervention. While the R2P doctrine has wide applications, among
the more controversial has been the Canadian government's use of R2P to justify
its intervention and support of the coup in Haiti.

Years after R2P, the World Federalist Movement, an organization which supports
"the creation of democratic global structures accountable to the citizens of the
world and call for the division of international authority among separate agencies",
has launched Responsibility to Protect - Engaging Civil Society (R2PCS). A
collaboration between the WFM and the Canadian government, this project aims to
bring NGOs into lockstep with the principles outlined under the original R2P
project.

The governments of the countries an NGO works or is registered in may require

reporting or other monitoring and oversight. Funders generally require reporting
and assessment, such information is not necessarily publicly available. There may
also be associations and watchdog organizations that research and publish details
on the actions of NGOs working in particular geographic or program areas. In
recent years, many large corporations have increased their corporate social
responsibility departments in an attempt to preempt NGO campaigns against
certain corporate practices. As the logic goes, if corporations work with NGOs,
NGOs will not work against corporations.

In December 2007, The United States Department of Defense Assistant Secretary

of Defense (Health Affairs) S. Ward Casscells established an International Health
Division under Force Health Protection & Readiness. Part of International Health's
mission is to communicate with NGOs in areas of mutual interest. Department of
Defense Directive 3000.05 in 2005, requires DoD to regard stability-enhancing
activities as a mission of importance equal to warfighting. In compliance with
international law, DoD has necessarily built a capacity to improve essential
services in areas of conflict such as Iraq, where the customary lead agencies (State
Department and USAID) find it difficult to operate. Unlike the "co-option" strategy
described for corporations, the OASD(HA) recognizes the neutrality of health as
an essential service. International Health cultivates collaborative relationships with
NGOs, albeit at arms-length, recognizing their traditional independence, expertise
and honest broker status. While the goals of DoD and NGOs may seem
incongruent, the DoD's emphasis on stability and security to reduce and prevent
conflict suggests, on careful analysis, important mutual interests.

Legal status
The legal form of NGOs is diverse and depends upon homegrown variations in
each country's laws and practices. However, four main family groups of NGOs can
be found worldwide:

 Unincorporated and voluntary association

 Trusts, charities and foundations
 Companies not just for profit
 Entities formed or registered under special NGO or nonprofit laws

NGOs are not subjects of international law, as states are. An exception is the
International Committee of the Red Cross, which is subject to certain specific
matters, mainly relating to the Geneva Convention.

The Council of Europe in Strasbourg drafted the European Convention on the

Recognition of the Legal Personality of International Non-Governmental
Organizations in 1986, which sets a common legal basis for the existence and work
of NGOs in Europe. Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights
protects the right to freedom of association, which is also a fundamental norm for
NGOs.

Steps in establishing NGOs

The first step in the establishment of the NGO is to identify the area of peculiar
needs of the society, such as health, HIV/AIDS, Maternal Mortality, Polio, food,
shelter,education, civil liberty and poverty alleviation among others.

The second step is to identify people of similar minds; there must be a unity of
purpose. The third step is to engage the services of a qualified legal practitioner for
guidance for the Registration process. Some NGOs can be registered with the
regional or central government and that depends on the scope of the operations of
the proposed NGO. The next important step also is to identify the internal or
external partners with a clearly stated objectives and plan of action.